


2-Birthday Suite

by WritestuffLee



Series: The Warrior's Heart, Volume 3, What Was Old is New Again [2]
Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, M/M, POV Alternating, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-01-02
Updated: 2001-01-02
Packaged: 2017-12-10 14:35:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/787139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritestuffLee/pseuds/WritestuffLee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Obi-Wan turns 23, an occasion for celebration, presents, messing about, and a little angst.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1. Stones

Ten years ago I gave Obi-Wan his first nameday gift as my padawan. We just barely made the Temple’s rather arbitrary deadline, else he would have been too old to be anyone’s padawan, at 13. He was tall for his age then, having come into an early growth, and both looked and acted older than most of his agemates. Obi-Wan was a very dedicated boy and moreso as a padawan, hardworking and serious about his studies and about being a Jedi—sometimes too serious. Before I ever knew him, I sensed that about him, watching him spar with such intense ferocity against Bruck Chun in a desperate bid to show himself worthy of my attention. So for his first nameday gift from his master, I gave him a rock.

It saved his life.

Since then, we have made something of a joke of that gift, but the stone itself has become almost a fetish for us, both symbolically and literally demonstrative of the way the Force can guide us, all unknown, how it both brought us together and seems to actively protect us, if not for each other then for its own use, some time in the future. This isn’t to say we are never hurt. Both of us have sustained at least one serious injury during our time together, and will doubtless suffer more. A Jedi’s life is hard and dangerous. But the Force brought us together as master and padawan first, then as lovers, and through it we have healed each other and grown together. So each year I give him another rock on his nameday, to remind him of the earliest days of our bond and the ways of the Force.

They are not always just stones. A few are carved in some likeness or with some symbol to remind him of one mission or another that marked a turning point in his training or a goal achieved, or some special event. The stone from the year we became lovers is incised with the likeness of a young vine working its tendrils into the cracks, splitting it open while at the same time holding it together in its twining grasp. Some are cut and polished and mounted to display their natural beauty. Some are set in another object, like the crystals in his saber, to make it useful or beautiful. One of them hums when it is stroked, because Obi-Wan loves music of almost any sort. Another changes color in response to the heat of the hand holding it. Jedi rarely wear jewelry, even when not on active duty, so there are no rings or pendants or earrings, simple or gaudy.

By temperament, Obi-Wan is not a collector of things as I have been, and before we became lovers, his room was spare and unadorned but for the stones I gave him. Now they line a shelf in the common room with some of my books. He has clear favorites among the nine I’ve given him, but he considers all of them often, sitting where he can see them when studying, using them as points of focus for his thoughts. Occasionally, when he has difficulty meditating, he will hold the first one I gave him and find his way to the Force through it, or stroke the singing one with his thumb to produce a soothing tone. So, joke or not, I know he values them, as he values our bond.

I would have known that even without what he did a few days ago. For the first time in our decade together, Obi-Wan chose to honor our bond on the anniversary of our joining as master and padawan. He did so elaborately, with a wonderful meal and a blue silk robe which I enjoy wearing as much as Obi-Wan enjoys seeing me in it. Then he gave me the gift of his body, as he has done so often before, though it is always hard to say who gives and who takes, and who receives the most pleasure. We ruined his newest set of blacks in our enthusiasm for one another, but that, surely, was part of his plan. So I have made my own plans to mark his nameday.

Today he turns twenty-three, and I sent him out with his friends to celebrate. Thirty-five years separate us, and although we have been together for ten years and lovers for the last three, our social circles overlap only slightly. Most of his friends are young knights or senior padawans not far from their own knighthoods, as he is not, and most of mine are masters and senior knights, a few of them members of the Council. It is difficult enough to fraternize with your elders and superiors at required functions, and Obi-Wan needs friends of his own, his own age, as much as I do.

I know, however, that he will not be out all night, despite the fact that many more of his friends are at Temple than is usual at one time, including someone very close to him whom he does not see often enough. I have not asked him to come home tonight, nor do I expect it of him, but I know Obi-Wan will, as I know what katas he likes best, and which side of the bed he prefers, and where and how to touch him to make him cry out. When he comes in, it will be quite late, and with his clothes reeking of various kinds of smoke and inhalants sold and consumed at the club they have gone to, with his mouth tasting of kisses, his breath of one or another of those inhalants, his body full of adrenalin from a night spent dancing, his eyes still alight with shared laughter. If he comes home tasting of semen and smelling of sex, so much the better.

Perhaps I should be jealous that Obi-Wan has another lover, but I do not feel so. I have never asked for an exclusive devotion from him, nor has he of me. Though lovers, we are still master and padawan, and he is not free to give that kind of devotion and will not be until he is a knight. I would not ask it even then, for what we are dictates our behavior in ways that make that kind of relationship nearly impossible. Once he is knighted, both of us will likely be away from Coruscant and each other for long periods of time, each of us perhaps training a padawan. This is likely the longest period of time together we will share.

Even so, I have always hoped he would choose to remain my lover after his knighting, and that perhaps the Council would pair us as it sometimes does two Jedi who work particularly well together, as we always have. I fear this is an old man’s wishful thinking. Few Jedi are paired permanently in any way, and life bonds are nearly unheard of, though they were not so rare in the past when there were more of us. Not that I would wish that entanglement on him, not with an old man like me.

And I would tell him none of this before his knighting. My reflexes are slowing and my body complains more and more with the weather and mornings, and Obi-Wan comes closer each day to fighting me to a draw or clear defeat in our sparring. I do not know how much longer I will be in the field, though I suspect it will not be much past Obi-Wan’s knighting, and it would be wrong to deprive the Order of his capabilities by keeping him near me. Jedi are taught to live in the moment in all things, even this, so I am glad enough that we have each other now, even knowing I am not the only one.

In truth, I find it a relief to know he has someone his own age who clearly loves him as I do, if not, perhaps, for the same reasons, and who will, I hope, be a comfort to him when I am one with the Force. No matter what we feel for each other—and I have no doubt of Obi-Wan’s love or my own—there is always the difference in our ages to consider, something he is more likely to overlook than I. There was a time when I had energy enough for two lovers, as he does, but not now. It is sometimes all I can do to keep up with him, though he does not think so. I am content with the one I have, but he need not be.

And I knew before he did that he was not content. I know that at first he turned to someone else in loneliness and pain when we had parted angrily and I was gone from him for a half-year, but that was not his only reason, not when he went back for more. There are pleasures I cannot give him because of who and what I am, and despite of the depth of my love for him—pleasures that I would not deny him. I would rather he sought them from someone I know and trust than from a stranger who might give him more than he bargained for or wanted. And while there is much I can and have taught him, there is much more he needs to learn himself, from his peers.

His other lover has taught him much. Obi-Wan has been with me long enough to know there are many ways to negotiate and many ways to win peace, and so he did from a long-time antagonist. By the time I returned, cleansed by fire of Xanatos’s shadows, Obi-Wan had won a bitter enemy to his camp, and changed the life of a young man the Council seems intent on throwing away. While it is something I might have done, it is not my example he followed, but his own heart, and in his own way. It is a pleasure to see him learning to trust himself so. For that experience alone, I am happy enough to let him go.

 

He does come home late, and I am not precisely waiting up, but he finds me sitting in my chair, wearing his gift, reading, when he comes in. Knowing I would be, he makes no attempt at stealth, but comes in singing and drops his black boots—the only part of his Jedi garb he has worn tonight—with a noisy thud beside the door. I love hearing Obi-Wan sing. He has a beautiful tenor that he has taken some care to train as part of his studies, as I learned the poet’s craft while still a padawan, as each padawan is encouraged to find an art to practice.

> _This moment or that—_  
>  how do we know?  
>  In the mirror of the past  
>  It's too obvious:  
>  I did this, should have done  
>  nothing, did that, should have . . .  
>  but it's gone now.

I don’t recognize the song, which is hardly surprising, but the melody is sweet and a little syncopated, in a minor key, and the lyrics are rather melancholy. I wonder for a moment if he has enjoyed himself, until he straightens up and smiles at me.

His eyes glitter, the pupils large with desire, and he slinks over to me in my chair, moving with a liquid stride designed to arouse his old, tired lover. It works. I’m half hard by the time he slides onto my lap, straddling my legs and pressing his mouth to mine. His hands comb through my unbound hair, fist in it, and hold me hard against him. His tongue opens my lips and meets mine. He tastes just as I thought he would, smells of sweat and smoke and sex. By the time we come up for air, my cock has escaped the robe and is arched against my belly between us. He grinds his groin against me so I can feel the twin bulge in his soft, tight leather pants. The friction of the leather nearly makes me come.

“Did you enjoy yourself, Obi-Wan?” I ask him when we lean back to inhale again.

“Yes, thank you. Very much. It was good to see everyone again, in one place at the same time, and the music was quite good tonight. I think I danced with nearly everyone in the club. At least it feels like it.”

“You could have stayed longer. . . .”

“When I had you to come home to? Why would I?” He leans forward to kiss me again and my hands mold themselves around his hard little ass. I wonder if he is already loosened and ready for me.

“Bruck says hello,” he murmurs, shivering, hands playing in my hair.

“Does he?” I reply vaguely, engrossed in the taste of Obi-Wan’s earlobe.

“Yes. He also says you’re a lucky man.”

“I am,” I agree, not so vaguely, and curl my tongue around his ear. Obi-Wan’s breath catches a little in his chest.

“Want to show me how lucky you are?” he growls.

“Oh yes. And I have a present for you.”

“Ah, let me guess what it is,” he says slyly, leaning back to look at me, arching one ironic eyebrow and stroking a finger up my cock. This time it’s my breath catching. “Is it hard as a rock?”

“Yes.”

His hand closes on one testicle, fondling. “Is it cold as a stone?”

“No.”

He hesitates then, and I could kill him for stopping. “No? What could it be then?” He closes one hand around my scrotum, strokes his thumb lazily over the crinkled skin, tugging a little, pulls me in with the other hand for another kiss. It’s all I can do not to erupt where we sit.

“Not what you think, padawan,” I tell him when we come up for air again. I’m surprised I sound as controlled as I do.

“Oh? Well, let me shower then and you can show me what it is, since I can’t guess.”

“You needn’t. Shower, I mean. I like the way you smell now.”

He smiles a little smugly, as he does when he thinks he has cracked my control. “I thought you might,” he says. Wicked boy.

Supporting his weight a little with the Force, I stand up, holding him as he wraps his legs around my hips. I have more room to knead that hard muscle he sits on now, and do so, making him grind against me again. He locks his ankles behind me, holds me tightly around the neck as though he were much younger, and lets me carry him into the bedroom. I set him down gently on the side of the bed, though I’d like to throw us both down on it, strip him out of what clothes are in the way and drive myself into him. I may yet get to do that, but it is his privilege to ask for it tonight.

“Is this my present?” he asks, picking up the velvet bag I’ve left on his pillow, fondling it the way he did my testicles. The inference isn’t lost on me.

“Yes. Open it.”

He does so, pulling out one by one, like a beaded necklace, a string of four stone spheres, two centimeters in diameter, strung ten centimeters apart on a coated silken strand of woven monofilament. Dangling from the end is an oversized ring big enough for two of my fingers. The spheres are black veined with white, white veined with pink, pink veined in green, and green veined with white, very smooth and highly polished. “You’re right. They’re warm,” he says, “like yours,” with a wink, weighing them in his heavy hands. “This one’s a bit sloshy inside. And this one . . . hums. And this one is heavier than it should be. And this one, this one feels like it’s alive, or there’s something alive in it, bumping about.”

“Magnetized bearings inside a polarized shell,” I explain.

“Very pretty. And very mysterious. What are they for?”

“Shall I show you?”

“Yes, please,” he replies, getting a glint in his eye again.

“It involves taking your clothes off,” I warn him.

“Oh all right. If you insist,” he replies with mock annoyance.

“Let me, if it’s such a bother,” I offer, and he acquiesces, pretending to sulk. He’s long outgrown that trait, but it makes his eyebrows curve so wonderfully that I never tire of seeing the mock expression on his face, and he knows it.

I open his shirt first, running my palm down his sleek chest and belly inside it as the closures split open. He shivers. He’s worn the green shimmersilk I bought for him on our last anniversary, the one that changes colors as he moves in the light. It ripples over him now like an aurora as I slide it off his shoulders and down his arms and over his hands, laying it out over the bench at the foot of the bed with my own robe.

Then I get up on the bed behind him and pull him in between my legs so he’s lying back against me, and slide one hand down the front of his pants, popping the snaps of the black leather with my thumb. The first time he put these on, I could barely keep my hands off him. They fit him like a second skin, soft as his own, and I enjoy taking them off him as much as seeing him in them.

I slide my hands down his hips, which he lifts a little off the bed, and down the outside of his legs, stripping off the leather at once, bending him forward beneath me as I reach down to his ankles. My cock grinds between us against the small of his back. He kicks the leather off his feet and onto the floor. I lean back again with him following, trailing my hands up the inside of his legs, behind his knees, inside his thighs, spreading them against mine. The skin there is unbelievably soft.

We’re both shaking now, hearts pounding, rocking us against each other.

Freed of the confining leather, his cock arches up against his belly. I run my fingers through the tight gingery curls at its base and inhale the scent on them, smelling his musky pong and someone else’s, almost familiar. Though three of us together does not appeal, knowing my lover has been with someone else before coming to me is surprisingly exciting.

Obi-Wan turns his face against my neck and bites a little. “I want my present,” he growls.

“You shall have it, my love,” I tell him. “Patience.”

Clasping him, I roll us both over then kneel up between his legs, pulling him onto his until he is kneeling beneath me, my cock sliding over the crevice between his cheeks. He shivers in anticipation. I reach beneath him and squeeze his balls, making him gasp and moan and arch against me, then put a hard pillow beneath him and push him down onto the bed again and spread his legs wider. He wriggles a little and props himself up on his elbows, making a curve of shoulders and back and rump even more attractive than his eyebrows. Beautiful. And shamelessly so. He knows this is a view I like.

I nip his shoulder, then kiss my way across it and down his spine, ending at the small of his back, just above the V of flesh at the top of his ass. It’s one of his most sensitive spots and I spend some time there, licking and sucking and nibbling, running my beard over the soft skin, listening to him sigh and moan, which he does eloquently. Then I mark him there, leaving a painless bruise only I can see, in the shape of my mouth. There are other bruises there, not mine.

Down the middle of his back are other marks of my own, permanent ones: two pictograms in Danjii, raised against his fair skin in welts and colored a deep blue. I trace a finger along the first one, lean over him again and whisper, “Passion”; trace the other one and murmur “Serenity,” then let my hands slide down his back again and watch as he shivers. “Which do you want tonight?” I ask him, holding his hips.

“Passion,” he growls.

I lay the string of balls against the curve of his spine, spread his cheeks and let the first of them slip between those firm hemispheres. Making sure my fingers are slick, I stroke two over and around the revealed pucker of muscle, coating it. He moans and wriggles, grinding against the pillow under his hips.

“Patience, love,” I tell him again, rubbing my palm against the small of his back and slipping two slicked fingers into him, flicking over his prostate. He bucks against the touch, crying out. As I thought, he’s loose and relaxed, though he tightens a little around my fingers. I stretch him a little more, soothing him, then coat the first of the smooth stone balls with lubricant and press it against his opening.

“The order these go in is very important,” I tell him, pushing it in gently. “They're strung this way for a reason.” Obi-Wan moans as it disappears into his rectum, stretching and filling him. I coat the next one and push it in, feeling it vibrating softly against my fingertips. Obi-Wan cries out and clenches his fists in the sheets as the first bumps his prostate and the second sets off an unnameable sensation in him. I coat the third—with its pellets pinging off the interior and each other, making it quiver unsteadily—and push it in against the second one. There is something incredibly intimate and erotic about pushing these into him and watching them disappear inside his body and seeing the cord hanging from him. It makes my hands shake. Obi-Wan throws his head back and moans again, writhing and grinding against the pillow beneath his hips. “Oh gods, Qui! What—”

“Shhhh. One more,” I tell him, and push the fourth one in just past the interior ring, then tug on the woven cord a little. His muscles clamp down hard around the cord and there’s a little bulge around his anus where the last ball sits packed against it. I lean down and run my tongue over it, making him thrust back. He’s breathing heavily now, and when I roll him over onto his back, leaving the pillow under his hips, his eyes are glazed, his mouth open. “Rock your hips a little.” I want him to feel what it’s like without any other stimulation.

He does, and the sound that comes out is articulate in its own way, though wordless. He reaches up to me, a little dazed, almost hypnotized by what’s going on inside him. I lean down and kiss him, his mouth first and then along his jaw, down his throat, over his collarbone, his nipple, which I bite a little. His fingers clench in my hair, his pelvis rocks, his cock leaking. I disentangle his hands gently and let them fist in the sheets as I kiss my way downward, over his ribs, his hard belly, swirl my tongue in his navel. Everywhere I taste the other, faintly. They’ve cleaned one another up, no doubt, as Obi-Wan’s often done with me, but the smell of another’s skin and sweat still clings to him without soap to wash it away. Wondering what they’ve done together makes me harder.

I take his cock in hand and swirl my tongue over the crown, making him thrash beneath me like a hooked fish. That only makes the vibrations and pressure in his rectum stronger, and moves the balls over his prostate. He cries out as though I’ve burned him. His muscles are quivering now and he’s breathing harshly. Relaxing my throat, I take him all in and find the ring at the end of the cord, slipping two fingers through it and pulling the last ball tight against his anus, almost out, stretching him open. I pull my mouth up his cock slowly, just grazing him with my teeth, tongue the sensitive spot on the underside and slide down again, repeating the motion again, again, again, again, each time a little faster. His hips pump into me and he’s crying out, lost, undone, so much in the moment, so beautiful. _Mine._ He arches up, coming, crying out. I swallow a little and let the rest of his cum spatter against my neck and chest so I’ll have his scent on me the way I know his other lover does. Despite the fact that he’s been with another, he comes in a long ropy jet. I rub it into my skin like cream and nuzzle my face against his softening cock.

“Oh gods, Qui. That’s amazing,” he murmurs dreamily, rocking, rocking, more gently now, still lost in the feelings coursing through him. He runs his fingers through my hair again. “It’s always so good with you.”

Sweat- and cum-slick, I slide up his body until I can recapture his mouth. I wonder if his other lover can make him say that. “Happy nameday, Padawan,” I murmur against his lips. He strokes his hands down over my back and closes them on my ass, pulling me hard against him, so he knows I haven’t come yet. His tongue thrusts into my mouth as he grinds against me and one finger strokes against my anus. It makes me shudder against him. He’s all fire tonight.

“Tell me what you want,” I murmur against his mouth.

“I want you. I want to be inside you, Qui. Let me in.”

It’s not a request he makes often; it’s not something I offer, or ask for, either. I don’t think he knows how much I want it, so it’s ironic he should think of it as a special gift. I roll over, pulling him on top of me and he sits up and straddles me, thick fingers drawing a trail of heat down my body to my groin. He moves back down my legs and then between them, as I pull my knees back against my chest for him. I should feel vulnerable like this, but all I feel is desire as he hefts my balls and strokes the skin behind them and back to my anus. I give him the lube and he slicks his fingers first, sliding one inside me.

“I want to hear you cry out, Qui, I want to know how I make you feel. I want to know I can rob you of words. Don’t hold back. Not tonight.”

And what harm can it do, for one time, one night? He knows the constraints between us as well as I do, and he is old enough now not to test them as he might have, as he did, once. In a few years, he will have all of me, along with his knighthood. So I let go.

He slides one finger in and out, rotates it, flicks against my prostate and I let out the sounds I’ve kept stifled other nights, other times, thrusting back against him.

Then he starts to tell me what he and his lover have done that evening: Dancing in a pack of young sweaty bodies, rubbing up against each other indiscriminately, hard and aching for release, kissing with tongues and hips mimicking each other. He twists and strokes with his finger, the other hand circling my cock, moving up and over the crown and back down. My hips rock up into him, back against him. I hear myself moan.

“Yes! Yes!” he hisses, ferally delighted. “Show me what you want, Qui, show me you like it.”

He works another finger inside me, waits for the muscles to stop spasming, and gently scissors me open more, slowly moving my foreskin over the crown of my cock. He tells me about leaving through the back exit with his lover, what they did there in the alley. It’s torture. I want more. And I find myself wishing I could have watched, could have, perhaps, fucked one of them as well. In my younger days, I would have.

“Tell me, Qui.” He squeezes my cock, slides the tips of three fingers in, and tells me about the ride home, then, as he’s working those thick fingers in deeper, how his lover shoved him against the wall of his quarters and—

“Oh, gods, Obi-Wan! Now!” I hear myself shout, my hips thrusting as mindlessly as his had been earlier. My heart feels like it might burst and I can feel the heat in my face and neck and chest, most of all in my groin.

I feel his fingers withdraw and then he pushes into me, showing our age difference in his quick return to hardness, hooking his arms behind my knees to hold me open and leaning over me. He builds the rhythm slowly, my cock caught between his lean belly and my own, until he goads progressively louder sounds out of me with each stroke until I’m groaning loud enough to make glass shudder. Each thrust sends a wash of fire through me. I open my eyes, see him above me, head thrown back, gleaming with sweat, hips working his cock into me. I know he’s feeling the balls inside him as well as his own pleasure of being inside me. “So beautiful,” I tell him. “So good, so hard, so hot, so good, so good, so good . . .”

It’s wonderful to let go a bit with him, but there’s more I want to give him too. With what little presence of mind I have left, I grope for the ring at the end of the cord and as he shudders into completion, I tug it, pulling the balls out one by one. His hips spasm and slam into me as each one leaves his body and he comes with a deep, guttural groan, more like the sounds I make, like the one I make now, coming with his last thrust and grind against me.

After a moment, he rocks back on his heels and we disentangle ourselves so he can collapse back into my arms. The smell of sex is thick in the air around us, and I can smell Obi-Wan’s lover more strongly now, for the heat. Or perhaps it’s only my voyeuristic imagination.

“Did you really let him—”

Obi-Wan chuckles. “Yes. I can’t believe I did, though.”

I can’t either, but I’m glad of it. Obi-Wan needs someone his own age to goad him out of the early senescence his own nature and having an old man for a lover would doom him to.

That said, Bruck Chun is the last person I would have thought to see him with, though he could be said to have brought us together. Somehow, his life has become intimately entwined with ours and he and Obi-Wan have taught each other much since they became friends and lovers. I find I like the boy, as well, though the two of them together are a study in contrasts. And I begrudge Bruck nothing he has of my lover, for I know I have the greater part of his heart, at least for now.


	2. 2. The Hard Place

I watch him dress, after we’ve gotten our breath back and wiped each other down. I’m still sweaty and the sheets reek of us, but in a moment that’s all I’ll have of him. He pulls on the tight black leather pants I had made for him, molding them to his body like a second layer of skin, tucking in the shirt his master gave him a halfyear ago. It’s mostly green, but changes color as he moves and as he walks from light to shadow, like his eyes do. He scrubs his hands through his hair, drying the last of the sweat out of it, flips his braid over his shoulder and leans down to kiss me again. I taste us on his breath. He makes sure I do.

“I love you,” he says and cups my cheek. “Remember that,” and turns away. The door closes quietly behind him. I hear the outer door of the quarters I share with my master close just as softly.

We’ve made love together a grand total of 17 times in the last two years. Yes, I keep count. It’s all I have to keep. Tonight was number 18 and I only had him for a little over an hour, not counting the time at the club. When we were inside my room, I pushed him against the wall, not wanting to waste a moment, went to my knees and rubbed my face against his crotch, the smell of leather and sex coming from him. He was hard already, we both were, but I took him out of those pants slowly and carefully, and had him there up against the wall, with that long, thick cock framed in black leather. I never thought I’d ever be blowing another man, and I’ve never wanted to do this with another, only Ben—and he had to teach me. Needless to say, I pretended I wasn’t a quick learner.

I made his hips jerk and his hands fist in my hair, made him cry out, made his knees go weak and swallowed as he came. Afterwards, he slid down with me, arms going around me tight, tongue thrusting into my mouth, hungry to taste himself, to taste us. Then he started stripping the clothes off me and pushed me onto the floor.

“I can’t . . . believe . . . I let you . . . do that . . . in that alley . . . outside . . . the club,” he said between hard, almost vicious kisses. Our teeth banged and grated. Last time he cut my lip open.

I grabbed him and rolled us over so he was under me, kissed him hard, crushing him to the floor with the ten more kilos of weight I have over him. I’m a bit bigger than he is, but he’s kicked my ass in the sparring rooms any number of times. Master Yoda would say that only proves his point, and it does. But there are times when size does matter—like when I’m sucking Ben off. It’s a real mouthful to get around.

“You loved it, Kenobi, you know you did.”

“Didn’t say—I didn’t,” he gasped. “I just can’t believe I let you—” Getting leverage somehow, he flipped me back and pinned me, groin to groin, and damned if he wasn’t getting hard again, “do that—” he purred, grinding against me, “—in public. Now it’s your turn.”

I never thought I’d like that either, but I do. Little gods, do I. And it’s another time size matters.

Tonight we went out for his nameday. He’s 23; I’m a little younger. We were initiates together, rivals, enemies for years. Now we’re lovers. Or I like to think of us that way. Really, we only sleep together now and then. “Sleep together.” That’s a nice euphemism. We fuck like two animals in rut now and then. No, that’s not fair. I know it’s more than that to him. I know I mean more than that to him. If he hadn’t fallen for his master before we were friends and had it not been mutual, we would be exclusively lovers as much as two padawans of different masters can be. As it is, we see each other maybe three times a year, because he’s apprenticed to a master much in demand, and so am I, now. Our paths seldom cross. Once we’re knighted, that won’t change much, unless we’re asked to work together. So I’ve learned to be content with what we have. It’s probably not much different than it would be under ideal circumstances. Unless we’re very lucky, Jedi don’t have lovers; we have liaisons. Or most of us do. Some of us don’t have either.

Then there’s Ben, who seems to get exactly what he wants. Do I sound resentful? I’m not. I’m glad for him. But there are times I wish I was more like him. It would make my life so much easier. And a lot less empty.

“Live in the moment,” he tells me. It’s something we’re both still learning to do, in different ways. When we’re together there’s no mention of his master, or very little. He doesn’t compare us, doesn’t cry out his name when he’s coming. When we’re together, I’m his lover. And it’s not as if I’m jealous. How could I be? Not anymore. There probably isn’t a human in the Temple who doesn’t envy either him or his master their choice of bedmate. I’ve got the one I want, as often as possible. It’s just that his master gets more of him more often. And I know, no matter what he says to me, that Qui-Gon Jinn is Ben’s first love. He wouldn’t lie if I asked him, but I won’t. I don’t have to. It’s obvious to everyone.

But he was dancing with me most of the night at the club. Then we came back here, where I asked him to spend the night, though I already knew the answer. Another time he would have said yes, would have expected to, but tonight he wants to celebrate with “Qui” as well as his other friends. That’s why we left the club a little early and came back here to my quarters, because we had our own private celebrating to do, as we will on my nameday too, if we’re lucky enough to be together for it. Just in case we’re not, I gave myself a little present in the alley on the way home. I’d have fucked him on the dance floor if I thought I could have gotten away with it. Well, actually, I could have. A little Force manipulation and nobody around us would remember a thing. We were packed in there so tightly we were practically fucking already anyway, and it’s not like I haven’t seen it happen there. . . . But I know I can only push Ben so far, and that would have been way over the limit. And he’s right. He’s good for me that way.

But I wish he were staying. It’s so hard to watch him go this way. On the nights he stays, now that neither of us have curfews, I get to wake up next to him in the morning. I couldn’t ask for a better present. We’re both late-night types and not our best in the morning. I’m grouchy and he’s usually just bleary—I don’t think I’ve seen him in a foul mood more than twice since I’ve known him. So we wake up slowly, holding each other, warm and drowsy and comfortable skin to skin. He always smells so good. Eventually we’ll make love again and get up and shower together and go on with whatever the day calls for. But those few minutes together, waking up—I’d give anything for more of those. Almost anything.

His master knows we sleep together. Sometimes I wonder if he doesn’t know when we’re having sex, since his bond with Ben is so strong. And Ben knows I don’t sleep with anyone else. I’m not much for bed-hopping. He’s always been more comfortable with that than I am. I need some kind of connection for it to mean anything, and if it doesn’t mean anything, why do it? Like after our first time, when Master Jinn had more or less abandoned him—an exercise I still don’t understand the point of—I knew I wanted Ben more than I’ve wanted anyone before. And I knew, when his master returned and Ben appeared in the showers with those characters on his back, that I’d have to settle for being the alternate choice. I’ve learned to live with that.

It’s been a struggle. I’m not like Master Jinn, who seems very much above something as petty as jealousy or possessiveness (though Ben swears he’s not and that’s what their little hiatus was all about). I’m only a padawan yet, with a long way to go before my trials—much longer than Ben. But Master Jinn’s always treated me like any of Ben’s other friends, and even, I think, come to like me. And it’s not like he’s just being magnanimous because he knows he’s in a better position than I am. He’s not condescending or pitying any more than he’s cold or proprietary when I’m around. From what Ben says, he never protests him spending the night, never asks him not to. He has, in fact, really gone out of his way for me more than once. He’s the one who found me a new master after mine died and I’d been without one for almost a year—and made sure I got a good one. If I’ve made up for the year of training I lost, it’s because of Ben pushing me in my studies and Qui-Gon’s efforts to fill in while I was masterless.

All that said, I do know Ben loves me. We have a bond that he doesn’t have with anyone else, not even his master. Ben calls it a lover’s bond, and maybe that’s what it is, but I don’t remember anybody telling us about those in sex-ed or Advanced Force Abilities, lecture or lab. All I know is that it’s not like my training bonds, and not like the bond he has with Qui-Gon. We can’t hear each other’s thoughts the way he and Qui-Gon sometimes can, but sometimes at night I can almost feel him wrapped around me, usually when I’m missing him most. Maybe it’s only an illusion, me kidding myself, or Ben faking me out, but somehow I don’t think so. When he’s not here, even when he’s shielding, I feel like there’s a cord stretched between us, no matter how far apart we are, and it’s definitely stronger when we’re together. Whatever bond grew between Ben and his master just happened, and became part of their training bond. But Ben and I made this one. He made it with me, so I’d know he loves me even when we’re apart.

It doesn’t hurt that the sex is so hot, either.

So I can’t complain. But when Ben leaves me in the morning, or worse, in the middle of the night like tonight, there’s a dull ache in my chest and some of the color goes out of my life.

I think I’m all right with it now. And it won’t always be this way. It might seem callous to say so, but Qui-Gon is 35 years older than Ben and I know it’s something he’s considered even if Ben hasn’t, or won’t. I know it’s not wise to think this way—so much can happen in our lives in the space of a careless moment, and Master Jinn may long outlive me. But it’s the only hope I have, because the chances of Ben falling out of love are nil.

I burrow down under the covers, smelling the scent he’s left behind and try to sleep. He’s told me before not to wait and I wouldn’t, if I were different. But I’m not like Ben, and there won’t be anyone else. Not really.


	3. 3. Between

I stop to catch my breath somewhere between Bruck’s quarters and my own, on my way from one lover to another with not even a shower. Crazy.

I must have been out of my mind. I must still be. How is it possible I feel this way, how do they both put up with it?

And why am I so happy?

The first time Bruck and I slept together I thought I’d lost Qui-Gon forever. He had blocked off our bond and gone off on a mission to bring his second, failed apprentice to heel, and was acting as if he weren’t coming back. I wasn’t sure that, if he did come back, he would still want me as either apprentice or lover. So it started out, with Bruck, as a way to make peace between enemies, as a ceremony and ritual to cleanse his quarters of his dead master’s presence, as a way to assuage our mutual misery and loneliness.

Force help us, we fell in love.

Or I did, at least. He must have been in love with me already, for a long time, to have carried so much animosity for so long, but I’ve no such excuse. I don’t know how it happened. I thought for a time it was just residual hormones, the afterglow of a night of enthusiastic lovemaking, but in the days that followed, I wanted to be with him as much as I’d ever wanted Qui-Gon. Then Qui-Gon came back, and it was—not like he’d never been gone, definitely not—somehow stronger, and more intense. When I told him about Bruck, he seemed almost relieved, rather than angry or hurt, and made it clear he didn’t expect me to give Bruck up, no matter how much I protested that it was a one-time occurrence.

We mended both our master-apprentice and lovers’ relationships and went on. In the meanwhile, Bruck got a new master. We remained friends but didn’t sleep together again until over a year later, after we had all gone off on other missions. When I saw him again, finally, it was like we’d never been apart, like it was with Qui-Gon but different.

The second time we slept together was almost an accident, or at least it felt like one. Like a speeder wreck, in fact. I can see Qui’s eyebrow rise with amusement and Bruck roll his eyes in sarcasm when I think that, but it was. “Oh yeah,” Bruck would agree, “we ‘accidentally’ kissed so hard that you almost chipped a tooth, and then I ‘accidentally’ took off your belt and ripped your tunics off, and you ‘accidentally’ put your hands down my pants and grabbed my ass, and—” until I’d have to shut him up with another “accidental” kiss. But I hadn’t intended to sleep with him again. I thought we both understood that what had happened a year ago wouldn’t happen again.

I’m not often wrong to that degree.

And again, all Qui-Gon said was, “I’m glad you have someone among your peers who cares that much for you, Obi-Wan,” when I told him we’d done it again, in an agony of shame. Since then, we haven’t mentioned it, but whenever Bruck and I are both at Temple at the same time, we’re usually with each other, and Qui knows what we’re up to. I’m beginning to think he takes his own pleasure in it. I wonder how good my shields are.

It is different with Bruck, different as I first told him it was different with men, because I was the first one he’d ever slept with—the only one, I think, even now. Very different. With Qui it can be any number of things: exciting, intense, ferocious, tender, comfortable, silly, and usually inventive, but somehow constrained, as it must be. With Bruck it’s—urgent, dangerous, a little wild. Like tonight, for instance.

We’d gone out dancing with a group of friends, because it’s my nameday, and left a little early—just past midnight—going out the back door into the alley because it was quicker than fighting our way to the main entrance. And in the alley, he grabbed me and pulled me back against him and started to rub his groin against my ass. “I can’t wait. I want you now,” he growled.

“Here?” I squeaked. “Are you mad?”

“Yes, here,” and his hand slid inside my pants and closed around my cock. In moments I was painfully hard, panting, and he was grinding against me in long, slow strokes, almost as though we were still dancing. We’d been doing that all night, rubbing against each other, teasing each other. We could just hear the rhythm of the music through the walls and he matched his movements to it, popping the snaps on my pants with a flick of his thumb, one by one, to the beat.

“Bruck—you’re crazy—we’ll get caught—”

“You want it,” he rumbled in my ear, ignoring my protests. “I know you do.”

And I did. My heart was banging frantically against my ribs. “We’ll get in—”

“Trouble? Gods, Ben, you’re being a Perfect Padawan again. We’re consenting adults. We wouldn’t be the first to do it back here. It’s practically expected. Let me put something else up your ass besides that stick.” One moment his hand was stroking me inside my pants and the next he’d worked the tight leather down around my thighs and his cock was hard against my ass, slick with pre-cum already.

“Tell me you want it,” he said, stroking me, cool air on my bare skin where it wasn’t covered by his own. I heard myself moan helplessly.

“Do it,” I gasped. And I must have really wanted it because when he bent me over and drove inside me there was no burn, no pain, just a wild thrill that we were here practically fucking in public. “Do it. Do it, do it, do it . . .” I kept saying, like a chant, as we moved with the thumping rhythm from the club. He held my hips hard against him, slamming into me. Gods it was good, too, sharpened by the cheap thrill of perhaps being caught, of doing it where anyone could see or hear us, and I came hard, stroking myself, spattering the wall. Bruck covered my mouth as I did or we would have had the patrol down on us, wondering who was being murdered back here. A moment later and he was pumping his cum into me, shuddering and bucking and making almost as much noise as I had.

Then it was all we could do to put ourselves back together and stagger out to the street and on our way home, sweaty and laughing and giddy that we’d gotten away with it. On the transport on the way home, beneath our cloaks we were feeling each other up, stoking the coals that roared into flame again the moment the door to his quarters closed.

I can’t imagine Qui-Gon doing any of that, certainly not fucking me in an alley.

Bruck and I are alike in many basic ways—we both have stronger connections to the Unifying Force than to the Living Force, for instance—but we’re also polar opposites in others. Bruck is mostly instinct and emotion, though he’s certainly not unintelligent. He prefers to feel before he thinks and I usually do the reverse. Qui-Gon has told me I’m more likely to act my age when I’m around Bruck, as though he thinks that’s a good thing. I’m more likely to get dragged into some wild prank or escapade with Bruck, that’s for certain.

The oddest thing is that Qui-Gon loves seeing me—and fucking me—when I’ve been with Bruck for any length of time. I know he’ll be waiting up for me tonight because he knows I’ll be coming home to him. He may not expect it of me, but I do, and he knows me well enough to predict my behavior with great accuracy. And he’s the one I want to come home to, because I don’t know how much time we have together.

It’s not something I like to think about. Sometimes, I’m forced to, you might say. When we first became lovers, I’d sometimes dream of our bed, burning, but Qui was ever the only one in it. Then, as I started to work more closely with Master Yoda, learning not to see the future but rather to follow the possible timelines for myself or someone else, I realized it wasn’t our bed, but a pyre. In that vision, Qui is about the age he is now. I don’t know how he’s died, whether peacefully or with some illness or injury, but I suspect the latter. There is such a feeling of wrongness and angry grief to the vision that it can’t be simply the end of his life. Fifty-eight or sixty or sixty-five is far too young for his normal life-span to be over, let alone one enhanced by serving the Light.

So I am going to lose him.

If not in the near future that leads to that pyre, then eventually some other way, through the natural course of life or some other unforseen blow. The years between us make that inevitable. Even if everything miraculously goes well in our lives, if Qui-Gon lives another fifty or sixty years and I another eighty or ninety, I will still spend the last third of my life without him, as I spent the first 13 years. Perhaps I’ll be reconciled to the idea by then, though I suspect not.

If nothing else, we will be together much less often when I am knighted and sent into the field on my own, and, alone, my chances of being killed are much greater than they are with him or another partner. It’s as true for Qui as it is for me, but I think he will probably ask to be taken off the field duty roster after I’m knighted. Already, he complains his reflexes are slowing and he’s growing too stiff to endure field conditions. I can’t fault him for it, but it hurts to hear him say so. I hate to hear him speak of leaving the things he loves and of his frailties. I love him so much.

I don’t expect Bruck to understand what I feel for Qui, but I don’t want to hurt him, either. He knows Qui is . . . is what? How do I describe what Qui-Gon is to me? All the roles he’s played in my life are mixed up together: rescuer, father figure, teacher, healer, partner, blood brother, confidant, friend, lover. At first it was hard to separate all of them, to keep the master and teacher separate from the lover, but we’ve both learned to do that now, as much as anyone can.

It’s not that Bruck means less to me, it’s that he _is_ less, just by virtue of our ages and circumstances. We’re peers, friends, former rivals for Qui-Gon’s attentions, and then enemies. I haven’t known him for half my life as I have Qui. We weren’t even speaking to each other three years ago. I’ve come to care about him very much, to want his happiness the way I want Qui’s. I can’t imagine my life without him, and I love him very much. Enough that I let him see parts of me only Qui knows, enough to build a connection between us that only death or mutual agreement would break.

But with Qui I have something so much stronger, something that just . . . happened, something I’m sure won’t end when our training bond is broken.

I can’t imagine my life without Bruck, but without Qui, it’s not even unimaginable. It’s impossible.

I see that pyre in the night and I’m filled with such terror, and a desperate sense of urgency. Something beyond my own need to please and desire to do well spurs me to work toward my trials. I want to be ready for whatever’s coming. I want to be able to do whatever I must to keep him beside me. I want us to grow old together. I want him to have time to teach me to meet our future with the same serenity he faces it with. To teach me how to love and let go.


End file.
